This is the “City of Yes, And…,” a monthly newsletter for paid subscribers offering deeper insights on recent essays, wider-ranging commentary, and personal reflections. This week’s essay offers some reflections on my recent interview with NY State Senator Zellnor Myrie, including my thoughts on the NYC mayoral election, land use reform, and one policy area where I disagree with the senator.
Your subscription makes this work possible, and I’m so grateful for your support!
Given the length of my interview with Senator Myrie, I didn’t have room to editorialize on the topics we discussed. We covered a lot of ground in a short time—I only had a half-hour with him—and we touched on many of the topics that are near and dear to my “City of Yes” heart. He was affable and thoughtful, and we easily could have spent more time on each of the subjects we discussed. What I found most striking about his candidacy is that Myrie is an elected official who is seriously grappling with the real issues facing New York City today and—especially with his housing plans—proposing meaningful solutions at the magnitude that the challenges deserve.
Rebuild NYC, Myrie’s plan to build 700,000 homes and preserve 300,000 more pushes the goalposts of housing policy in New York, recognizing not only the scale of the existing shortage but also the need to plan for future growth. By comparison, the plans of fellow mayoral candidates like former Governor Andrew Cuomo and current City Comptroller Brad Lander to build 500,000 homes, announced relatively recently, feel like belated half-measures; Mayor Eric Adams’s “City of Yes” plan to build 100,000 homes now seems quaint. Myrie’s ambitions are still outrageous in 2025—but as he notes, they are in line with what we were capable of doing a century ago. Yes, we built the Empire State Building in thirteen months in the midst of the Great Depression, but we were also building 70,000 homes per year. In 2024, New York built less than 34,000—and had the lowest number of permitted units since 2016. Meanwhile, Tokyo builds around 140,000 homes per year.
New York’s housing woes are an outgrowth of restrictive zoning and constrictive processes that effectively make it impossible to build anything “by right” in the city. In particular, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP)—whose unwieldy name and evocative acronym accurately foreshadow what it’s like to experience—has added so many veto points to the process of land use approvals that every project is subject to negotiation. This is not a process governed by the rule of law. It’s a shakedown.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to City of Yes to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.